Back From The Brink, Takhi (przewalski’s Horse)

“The first written accounts of the Przewalski's horse (Equus ferus przewalskii) were recorded by the Tibetan monk Bodowa around 900 AD…. The last wild population of Przewalski's horses – called takhi in Mongolian – survived until recently in south-western Mongolia and adjacent China in the provinces of Gansu, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia… The reasons for the extinction were seen in the combined effects of pasture competition with livestock and overhunting. At this point in time the species survived solely in captivity due to breeding based on 13 founder animals… Subsequent to the establishment of the International Przewalski's Horse Studbook at Prague Zoo in the Czech Republic in 1959, the North American Breeders Group in the 1970s (which became the Species Survival Plan for the Przewalski's Horse) and the initiation of a European Endangered Species Programme in 1986 under the auspices of Cologne Zoo in Germany, the captive population grew to over 1,000 individuals by the mid- 1980s…. Today the Mongolian population again consists of some 350 wild individuals, and the species was subsequently down-listed to Critically Endangered in 2008 and Endangered in 2011.”